Blair Collection > Celtic gleanings, or, Notices of the history and literature of the Scottish Gael

LECTURE IV. 147
and supporters of civil and religious liberty.
The neighbouring clans to the north of these,
throughout Lochaber and the surrounding dis-
tricts, were the abettors of an entirely different
policy. They were almost uniformly Koman
Catholics, and the friends of unlimited mon-
archial government. Their religion might have
perhaps been the principal element in the for-
mation of their policy, but they had a policy ;
and the sympathies of the poorest clansman
were, so far as that policy was concerned, at one
with those of the chief. The time is not long
gone past when, among the Highland peasantry,
the justice of the claims of the family of Stuart
to the throne of Great Britain was wont to be
stoutly maintained. Among the abettors of
these claims none was more zealous than Eoin
Lorn, the Bard of Keppoch ; so much so, in-
deed, that Charles II. appointed him a sort of
Poet-Laureat for Scotland, and conferred upon
him a small pension, w^hich it is said he enjoyed
till the period of his death. Many of his Jacob-
ite compositions have been handed do^Ti to us,
and are now^ in print. In these, two things are
remarkable : his fierce appeals to the passions
of the clans favourable to the royal cause, and
his equally violent denunciation of those opposed
to it. His enmity to the Clan Campbell is of